Pablo Lobato – Profanations

Develops a research-based practice that moves across different languages and media, often unfolding through collaborative processes shaped by each material, situation, or context. Lobato lives and works in Nova Lima, Minas Gerais. He holds a degree from the School of Communication and Arts at PUC Minas, specialized in cinema through a joint program of PUC Minas and the Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais (UFMG), and studied photography at Escola Guignard – UEMG. He was also one of the founders of Teia – Centro de Pesquisa Audiovisual in Belo Horizonte.

His films have been screened at festivals such as Locarno, Sundance, Guadalajara, Oberhausen, and Havana. He directed the feature film Acidente [Accident] (2006), awarded Best Ibero-American Documentary at the Guadalajara International Film Festival. In 2009, he received a fellowship from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation.

His work has been presented at institutions including the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), the New Museum, the Museo Tamayo, the MACBA – Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona, the Museu de Arte Moderna de São Paulo, and the Museu de Arte do Rio, where he presented the solo exhibition Da natureza das coisas [On the Nature of Things] in 2016. He has also participated in biennials in Uruguay, Argentina, India, Portugal, and the United Arab Emirates.

In recent years, he has developed Bárbara de Cocais, a long-term community sculpture project that articulates art and human formation through care practices and collective processes rooted in a specific territory. His works are part of collections such as Fundação Joaquim Nabuco (Recife), Fondation Hippocrène (France), MACBA – Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona, Museu de Arte da Pampulha (Belo Horizonte), Museu de Arte do Rio, Museu de Arte Moderna do Rio de Janeiro, and Sharjah Art Foundation (United Arab Emirates).

The diversity of Brazilian cultural manifestations—expressed in rituals, festivals, music, and collective ways of inhabiting space—constitutes an important field of research and reflection within the program of the Instituto Tomie Ohtake. Over the years, the Institute has presented artistic practices that engage with these expressions as ways of thinking about social experience and its transformations. It is in this context that the exhibition Profanações [Profanations], by Pablo Lobato, is held, with a curatorial text by Moacir dos Anjos.

Profanações, a new work by the artist, brings together three films made between 2011 and 2015 and is presented in the exhibition of the same name as an installation that combines image, sound, and architecture. Placed within the same space, the films establish relations with one another and create a situation that invites visitors to adjust both the time they spend in the space and their mode of attention. The alternation of projections, together with the sound composition, defines a continuous field in which gestures, rhythms, and pauses become structuring elements.

Pablo Lobato’s practice develops through a close engagement with collective manifestations found in different regions of Brazil. His work focuses on situations in which the body, sound, and movement operate as forms of organization and expression. In shaping these images, the artist does not seek to fix meanings but rather to follow the variations, tensions, and deviations that emerge within these practices. His research moves between cinema, video, and the visual arts, articulating distinct procedures according to each context. Sound plays a decisive role in this construction, guiding the experience and establishing contrasts that reconfigure the viewer’s immediate relation to the images. What emerges is an environment in which seeing and listening become inseparable acts.

At the Instituto Tomie Ohtake, Profanações proposes a space for the coexistence of different times, presences, and sonorities. By bringing visitors closer to practices in constant transformation, the installation places them within a sensory experience grounded in duration and listening, affirming the value of attentive time in a context marked by its constant dispute. In doing so, continuities and tensions that run through Brazilian culture become perceptible. The exhibition thus reaffirms the Instituto Tomie Ohtake’s commitment to the promotion of contemporary art and to the creation of contexts for experience and reflection.

Profanações is presented by the Ministry of Culture, Claroescuro, and the Instituto Tomie Ohtake, through the Rouanet Law. The show is supported by Nubank, institutional patron of the Instituto Tomie Ohtake, and sponsored by Supermix and MR Mineração, with additional support from Luciana Brito Galeria.

Instituto Tomie Ohtake

Profanations

In Profanações [Profanations] (2015), Pablo Lobato brings together three films made between 2011 and 2015—Bronze revirado [Overturned Bronze], Folia, and Corda [Rope]—creating a sensitive territory that did not previously exist. To reach them, visitors follow a path in which architecture itself becomes an integral part of shaping sensations and meanings. The films affirm the artist’s interest in vernacular operations that seek to “profane the unprofanable,” returning gestures, voices, and objects—once withdrawn into the religious sphere and stripped of their worldly content—to the realm of the common. These are profanations that do not provoke an open confrontation between these two spheres but instead reveal the human dimension within what is taken to be divine.

Bronze revirado (2011) opens with the image of a church’s bell tower in São João del-Rei, Minas Gerais. The stillness of the bell housed there is soon broken by young Black men who set it in motion with vigor, ringing it in a rhythm closer to the cadences inscribed in their bodies than to those prescribed by Catholic ritual. They take turns in pairs, keeping the bell in constant pendular motion while skillfully avoiding potentially fatal contact with the heavy instrument. Both the rhythmic pulse of the ringing and the choreographies traced by these bodies echo the fact that the bell ringers of this and other churches have, since the eighteenth century, been enslaved Africans and their descendants, holding both the duty and the privilege of setting the bells ringing. By turning religious ritual into an act of play, these masters unsettle the exclusive association of bell ringing with the sphere of the colonial sacred, inscribing in gesture and sound histories of subalternization and resistance.

In Folia (2013/2015), Pablo Lobato records scenes from the Folia de Reis celebration in Bom Despacho, Minas Gerais, a festival in the Catholic religious calendar that commemorates the journey of the Three Wise Men to welcome the Christ Child. As the film moves between images of the Bastião reciting poems, musicians playing, and the foliões entering houses to ask for donations, it gradually turns its attention to the singing of the members of the folia, sustained by a chorus of male voices. The warm, inviting sound of the songs is, however, often pierced by a falsetto voice that disturbs their meaning. The discomfort of hearing what is not expected is heightened by scenes that foreground these vocal interventions, as if the religious songs of praise were revealing their moment of greatest worldliness. As if the celebration of the divine became, for a moment, indistinguishable from madness.

Corda (2014), finally, was filmed in Belém during the celebrations of the Círio de Nazaré. The title refers to the long rope—around eight hundred meters long—stretched along the route of the procession in honor of Our Lady of Nazareth. A symbol of faith’s sustaining power, it draws thousands eager to grasp it along the procession’s route. The camera positions itself close to the bodies, mostly male, that press together to touch it. At times it lingers at the level of the participants’ heads and weary eyes; at others, close to the ground, it follows the rhythm of footsteps to remain near the object of devotion. In defiance of the festival’s rules, promesseiros cut the rope to secure a piece of it for themselves. The perception of this act guides the camera toward the chaos released by the cut—a testament to the struggle to keep, even if only, a frayed strand of the rope, a relic at once sacred and profane.

Without diminishing the autonomy of the three films, Profanações reconfigures them within a territory designed to receive and transform them into parts of a distinct work. In doing so,it reveals how, across such different situations, the boundaries between the religious and the worldly begin to blur. From this porous environment emerge, in the gestures and voices of so many people, memories of violence, resistance, and beliefs that have shaped the history of Brazil.

Moacir dos Anjos

Profanations

In Profanações [Profanations], Pablo Lobato gathers three works in a single room: Bronze revirado [Overturned Bronze], Folia and Corda [Rope], films made between 2011 and 2015. This is not simply a matter of placing distinct works side by side, connecting them by form or theme, but the creation—through deliberate physical proximity—of a sensitive territory that did not previously exist. To access it, visitors remove their shoes before walking through the corridor and the antechamber, which slow down the time of the outside world and anticipate another time, that of the inside—here, architecture acts as a filter and as an intrinsic part of the construction of meanings and sensations. At the end of this path, one arrives at the room where three projections alternately screen the films, now transformed into elements of a new work.

These films affirm the artist’s interest in vernacular operations that, in different ways, reclaim what is usually held under the domain of the sacred. They also express a desire to draw closer to those who seek to “profane the unprofanable”: to return to the realm of the common gestures, voices, and objects that, at uncertain moments in the past, were absorbed into the religious sphere and stripped of their worldly content.

These are operations that seek less to invert hierarchies than to loosen or dissolve the barriers between the celestial and the earthly—between religion and everyday life. They constitute profanations that do not provoke an open confrontation between these realms but instead reveal the human within what is presented as divine—even if the intentions of the protagonists in the filmed scenes are never explicitly stated.

In the earliest of the works incorporated into the exhibition, Bronze revirado (2011), the artist presents a vertical image of a Baroque church’s bell tower in São João del-Rei, Minas Gerais, and of the bell housed within it. The initial stillness of this calling instrument, and the silence of this opening scene, are soon broken by young men who set it in motion with vigor, making it ring in a rhythm of their own making—closer to the cadences inscribed in their bodies than to the patterns prescribed by Catholic ritual. From that point on, they succeed one another in pairs, keeping the bell in constant pendular motion while skillfully avoiding potentially fatal contact with the heavy instrument.

Both the rhythmic pulse of the ringing and the choreographies traced by these bodies—almost all of them Black—evoke traditions distinct from those celebrated in churches like the one that served as the setting for the recording. They echo the fact that, since the eighteenth century, the bell ringers of these temples have been enslaved African men and their descendants, holding both the duty and the privilege of climbing to the tops of the towers to set the bells ringing, announcing masses and significant events in the city. By turning a religious ritual into a game or playful act, the movements of these young masters’ bodies disturb the exclusive association of bell ringing with the sphere of the colonial sacred—inscribing, in gestures and sounds, histories of subalternization and strategies devised to subvert it.

The second film included in the exhibition is Folia (2012/2015), in which Pablo Lobato records and edits scenes from the Folia de Reis celebration in Bom Despacho, also in the state of Minas Gerais. The festival belongs to the Catholic religious calendar and celebrates, through reenactments, music, and song, the journey of the Three Wise Men as they set out to greet the Christ Child.

As the film moves between images of the Bastião—a masked figure who dances to entertain the public and recites poems and texts related to the celebration—of musicians playing viola, accordion, tambourine, rattle, snare drum, and other instruments, and of the foliões entering houses to ask for donations—rather than to offer gifts, as was the purpose of the visit of the Kings they celebrate—the film gradually turns its attention to the singing of the members of the folia, sustained by a chorus of male voices led by the Mestre, the leader of the group.

The warm, inviting sound of the songs is, however, often pierced by a high falsetto voice that unsettles the meaning of what is heard and lingers in the air like a lament or a plea. In Folia, the discomfort of hearing what is not expected—or what cannot be understood—is heightened by the unfolding sequence of scenes that foreground these vocal interventions, as if the religious songs of praise were revealing their moment of greatest worldliness. As if the celebration of the divine were, for a moment, indistinguishable from madness. As if folia were not only festivity and acclamation, but also strangeness and delirium.

The exhibition is completed by the work Corda (2014), filmed in Belém, Pará, during one of the largest religious celebrations in Brazil: the Círio de Nazaré. The title refers to the long sisal rope—around eight hundred meters long—stretched like a rosary along the route of the procession led by the berlinda, the ceremonial carriage that bears the image of Our Lady of Nazareth.

The rope’s powerful symbolic charge—a metaphor for the sustaining power of faith—draws thousands of people eager to grasp it along the procession’s route. Pablo Lobato’s camera places itself amid this sea of sweat-soaked bodies, almost all barefoot, crowding around the rope to touch it. They are predominantly male bodies, pressing and brushing against one another as if forming a single living organism.

The varied and powerful sounds of this environment, however, are not heard; instead, only the sounds produced far away by subtle touches on the strings and keys of a prepared piano remain audible. At times, the curious camera lingers at the level of the participants’ heads and weary eyes; at others, close to the street’s surface, it seems to follow the rhythm of footsteps, marked by the immense effort required to remain near the object of devotion.

In defiance of the festival’s rules, however, some promesseiros cut the rope amid the religious ritual in order to secure a piece of it for themselves. The perception of this forbidden act draws the artist’s camera and guides its movement toward the chaos released by the cut. In doing so, the camera witnesses the intense struggle among devotees to keep as a relic—at once sacred and profane—even the smallest strand taken from the immense rosary: the immeasurable symbolic made tangible as a rare object.

After the crowd disperses and the trance produced by the subversive gesture dissipates, a new knot is tied in the rope, and the bodies gather tightly around it once again. A concise rendering of the festival’s paradoxical dynamics, the work takes shape through the convergence of these two distinct flows of people that shape the procession: one linear, governed by the integrity of the rope; the other chaotic, corresponding to the moments when it is cut.

Without compromising the integrity or autonomy of the three films, Profanações reconfigures them within a territory designed to receive and transform them into parts of a new and distinct work. In doing so, it reveals how, across different situations, the boundaries between the religious and the worldly begin to blur. What emerges is a porous environment in which the gestures and voices of so many people give rise to memories of violence, resistance, and beliefs that have shaped—and continue to shape—the history of Brazil.

Moacir dos Anjos